“You get any information that might help your quest?” Lakeo glanced over her shoulder.
Yanko had been monitoring the route behind them frequently during their flight. He hadn’t sensed any humans on their trail yet, but he was also distracted, so he did not know if he could rely on his mental skills right now.
“I found out the lodestone probably isn’t here. Some archeologist pirate stole it seventy years ago. If it’s even the right one.”
“Where’d he take it?”
“No idea.” Yanko would need the luxury of spending weeks researching in a library—a library where he read the language—to have a chance at ferreting out that information. Even if he somehow found the time and the ideal library, the information might not be there, not if Kyattese archaeologists had been looking for the pirate’s stash for decades. What did he have that would allow him to find what they had all missed? Nothing.
A siren wailed in the distance, originating from the direction of the house. Was that what a police alarm sounded like here?
“If they weren’t searching before, I think they are now,” Yanko muttered.
“Yeah. Damn. How are we going to find those caves in the dark?” Lakeo flung an arm toward the dark side of the volcano. If it had been bare lava stone, they might have had a chance, but it had doubtlessly been centuries since the last eruption, because dense green foliage grew halfway up the side. Only up near the top were there bare black patches.
“I don’t know, but lava should want to flow downward, right? Drawn by gravity? Maybe if we run along the bottom and come across a valley or depression, we’ll find an entrance there.”
“How can you... talk so much? Aren’t you... winded too?”
“I’m not carrying as many books as you. Why did you take them, anyway?”
“I didn’t think anyone would miss them. They have thousands. Tens of thousands.”
Yanko didn’t answer. The road had turned to follow the base of the volcano, and he was squinting into the gloom to the side, hoping to spot some terrain feature that would hint of caves. If he had time, he might be able to stop and concentrate more fully, using his senses to see what his eyes could not, but he was much better at finding the presences of living things than inanimate objects or geographical features. They did not have energy about them the way people and animals did.
“I didn’t plan to take anything,” Lakeo huffed, slowing down and grabbing her side. “I didn’t want to. I just wanted a chance to learn. To become a real mage, damn it. But did you see the price of their tuition? I could never afford that, not even to take a single class. Even if I had worked in your uncle’s mine for five years, I wouldn’t have had enough.”
Another siren wailed, this time from ahead of them, and Yanko slowed down too. “They must have guessed we would run back toward the city. They’re probably planning to form a barricade, cut us off.”
Even if the property was miles wide, the terrain could make it difficult to slip through, and if his warrior mage nemesis was up there, he would be able to sense Yanko even if they left the road and sneaked through the cane fields.
Lakeo growled. “How many are up there? Can you tell?”
“Too many.” His shoulders slumped. Should he even be trying to evade the authorities? What if he managed to make it back to the city? How would that help him? He might find the Falcon’s Flight again, but could he convince the captain to take them back on board? Even if Minark was willing, he would be heading off to the next place where he had cargo to deliver; he wouldn’t want to go on a hunt for a long-dead pirate’s stash.
A presence nudged the back of his mind. Yanko slowed to a stop to focus on it. The mage? No, it was small and flying.
“Great,” he said, “I can’t even hide from a bird. What are the odds of evading police and mages?”
Kei struck the back of Yanko’s shoulder, startling him as claws gouged him through his clothing. The parrot flapped its wings, batting him on the back of the head, and for a moment, Yanko thought he was being attacked. Then he realized Kei must have tracked him through their link rather than by sight. If parrots were like most of the birds back home, they had poor night vision.
The claws dug in again, as Kei finally righted himself, and the familiar request for chips filled his mind.
Yanko dug into his pocket, if only so the creature could sate its hunger and fly away, but he paused, fingers hovering over the remaining crumbs. If Kei had found the neighbor, maybe he could locate other humans. Yanko shared an image of the white-clad mage hunter and was working out a way to promise that he would share more chips in exchange for information on the person’s whereabouts. But Kei responded quickly, showing Yanko a memory of seeing the woman as he flew over her. She had been running along the road with trees on her right and fields on her left, a bow and quiver on her back and one of her katanas drawn as she approached the bend.
Yanko gulped. He and Lakeo had gone around that bend only a few moments before.
“We have to get off the road,” Yanko whispered, slipping into tall grass to the side.
Watch her, he told the bird. He was tempted to ask Kei to distract the woman, but she might kill him with a single swipe of her katana.
Chips?
Yes, if you watch her. Let me know if she’s able to keep tracking us. He knew the parrot wouldn’t understand the words, but he tried to share images that conveyed the same information.
Whether or not Kei understood, he leaped into the air again, flying back the way he had come.
“I’m going to need to get a shoulder pad if he’s going to insist on being my friend.” Yanko rubbed his shoulder and pushed deeper into the grass.
“If you get killed, having a bird scratching you won’t be a problem anymore.”
“A cheerful thought.”
“I saw the lights of one of those funny carriages right before jumping into the grass,” Lakeo said. “They can drive faster than we can walk. They’re not far behind.”
“The mage hunter is even closer.”
“Wonderful.”
“Keep walking,” Yanko whispered. “I’m going to try to delay her.”
“Delay the carriage, too, will you?” Lakeo continued on without looking back, the tall grass rustling around her.
Yanko sighed and told himself it was silly to want a female traveling partner who would gaze back with concern, touch his cheek, and make him promise to be careful before he went off in pursuit of danger. He thought of Arayevo briefly, then shook his head. There was another woman he had to concentrate on.
Yanko knelt in the grass, so that it covered his head, and touched the damp earth. He imagined the dirt road and the path they had just made, broken reeds in their wake. First, he healed those stalks of grass and encouraged them to show no sign of his passing. It might not matter. Either the mage hunter was so good at tracking that she was having no trouble following him, or Sun Dragon was guiding her. If Yanko managed to escape this night, he would have to find a way to keep the mage from sensing him in the future.
Once the grass had healed, he reached out to the countless roots in the ground around him, most small and belonging to the ground cover, but some were deeper, larger ones stretching out from nearby trees. He sent some of his own energy into them, giving them the power to animate and grab. Trusting the hunter would come down the road, he set his trap to trigger as soon as someone’s weight touched the earth above the roots. If the carriage crossed that earth first, it mattered little. Someone would be inconvenienced.
His trap set, he turned and headed after Lakeo. The inconvenience would not distract his pursuers for long, and the roots would not do any lasting damage to anyone, but maybe they would make his pursuers less eager to charge into the brush after him.
Lakeo had covered more ground than he expected, and Yanko had to reach out with his mind to find her. She stood in the shadow of a charred tree that had been struck by lightning. A small hollow marked the ground ahead of her, and she was trying t
o find a cave.
Yanko reached the stump at the same time as Kei returned, promising the assassin would reach his trap soon. He handed the parrot a few crumbs.
“Find anything?” he called softly.
Lakeo had clambered down into the hollow. A soft splash sounded. “Does a wet foot count?”
“I’ll see if I can sense anything.” Yanko shrugged off his pack and dug out his mother’s robe. He hadn’t had a chance yet to figure out its properties, but if there was a chance it did indeed improve the mental stamina of the wearer, he could not pass that up. He feared he would need every iota of stamina he could manage tonight. He fished out the amulet, too, and tugged it over his head. Though he had not donned it before, he trusted it would not do anything inimical. And maybe it would help.
“This is pointless,” Lakeo said as Yanko was stuffing his other clothes back into his bag. “Let’s just climb the side of the volcano. See if we can get around them that way.”
Yanko eyed the slope and how quickly it grew steep after the trees stopped. They would struggle to reach that spot, and they would be visible to anyone on the plantation below, too, if they climbed out above the brush. Finding a tunnel through the volcano would still be the best course, if there even was one. He wished Akstyr had given better directions.
Yanko stretched toward the rocky slope, trying to sense the promised tubes. Unfortunately, he could tell right away that there weren’t any near them. He pushed deeper, but encountered nothing but solid rock. On a whim, he probed the surface higher up the slope, sinking his awareness into the volcano, trying to feel the contours of its body and judge how lava might have once flowed from its core. At the tip of his limit, he found what he sought, an opening large enough for a person to walk through. One of the promised lava tubes? It had to be. Maybe they were all over, like a honeycomb inside the volcano. He tried to follow it, to find the entrance, but it continued on without nearing the surface.
Claws digging into his shoulder pulled him out of his concentration. He wouldn’t have been able to push farther, anyway, not without hurting himself. Besides, going so deeply into his mind when the assassin who wanted him dead was a quarter of a mile away was not wise. Lakeo was climbing the slope, investigating farther instead of watching his back.
You didn’t ask for her to do that.
I know, he answered himself. They needed to take risks to find the caves.
Kei shared an image with him, the white-clad figure hacking at vines and roots that had snared her legs. Yanko allowed himself a short feeling of pleasure. She wouldn’t be entangled for long, but maybe they had a few more minutes.
That would have been your chance to get rid of her, you know.
I’m not getting rid of anyone.
If you don’t kill the assassin, the assassin will kill you. She’s a mage hunter, you fool. You know what that means. She’s someone who trained for at least ten years to resist magical attacks and destroy mages.
She’s not resisting my roots, is she?
Just don’t try a mental attack. She’ll be trained to deflect those.
I’m no mind mage. That’s not a problem.
Yanko cursed at the voices in his mind; they were more annoying than the parrot, and he didn’t have time to chat with himself.
Lakeo kicked a rock free, and it bounced and clanked down the slope.
Yanko grimaced, certain the hunter would hear that. A few birds squawked and flew out of a bush, annoyed at having their resting spot disturbed. Yanko looked skyward, and sent out a soft plea, trying to convince them to fly toward the volcano instead of the road—the hunter would be sure to see them otherwise and guess what had disturbed them. As he was looking up, he spotted a bat flapping its wings and heading out for the night’s hunt.
An idea leaped into his mind. He might not have much luck finding lava tube entrances in the huge mass of rock that rose up before them, but he could sense animals more easily. He reached out again, this time searching for the auras of bats instead of trying to push through layers of stone.
Almost immediately, he sensed a colony, about five hundred meters off to their right and two hundred meters above them. They were active, flying in and out of a cave.
“Lakeo,” he whispered, hustling to catch up with her. “This way.”
She shifted directions and followed him without a word. He hugged the trees and vegetation as much as he could for cover, though he saw that they would have to travel out onto bare rock before reaching the cave. From his position, he couldn’t tell if it led farther back into the mountain, but he hoped it was the entrance to the lava tubes that they sought. If not, it would at least be a good place to make a stand.
Or surrender.
No, he couldn’t surrender. If it had meant turning himself over to the police, he might have considered it, but if the hunter truly wanted him dead, he could not give up. He had to fight, to eliminate her as a threat.
Climbing took most of his concentration, but he tried to check on their pursuers at the same time. He could hear them, that was for certain. Whatever magic or mechanism created that siren, it was louder than ever, spewing its undulating cry across the cane fields. He could hear shouts, too, excited cries from the road. There were no hounds that he could send down a wrong trail, unfortunately. Sun Dragon would not fall for that again, regardless.
When they left the vegetation behind and clambered onto bare rock, Yanko looked down, morbidly curious as to how many people had come out to hunt him. Two roundabouts were parked on the road, and a dozen lights, some magical and some simple flame lanterns, illuminated the brush and grass on either side. He didn’t see any sign of Dak or the Komitopis family members. They hadn’t come to join the hunt, but they had not come to help, either. Not that Yanko had expected them to.
He and Lakeo had climbed high enough that he could not hear conversations on the road—not that he would have understood them—but he saw a couple of people hacking at the ground with swords. His roots must still be trying to snatch people. Good. But the hunter had escaped—he didn’t see anyone in white.
He turned back to the rocky slope. If he could not see her, she was probably already on his trail again. She would not use a light that might give away her presence.
Yanko asked Kei to watch for her again. Even though the parrot flew off, seemingly interested in helping, Yanko couldn’t keep from hunching his shoulders as they continued upward. The dark lava rock should hide them, unless someone thought to shine a light up here, but he felt vulnerable being out in the open.
The short chirps and squeaks of the bats drifted down to him, just audible over the sirens below. Almost there.
“They went this way,” came a cry from down below.
Yanko winced. The roots must have been defeated, because all of the lights converged on the road and then headed into the grass, toward the stump where he and Lakeo had paused. He reached out toward the bats in the cave, some flying out to hunt, others still dozing on the ceiling. Their minds were strange, even odder than those of birds and fish, but he tried to impart the idea upon them that a feast of bugs waited in the grass below and that they should descend to lunch on it.
“I see it,” Lakeo breathed. “Finally.”
The cave opening was not easy to spot, but because of his awareness of the bats, Yanko had been angling toward it all along. He reached the gap between two slabs of rock first. The shape of the mouth disappointed him as soon as he had a good look at it, because it appeared to be a natural fissure rather than something made by lava pouring out. It was a narrow natural fissure too. Would they even be able to get through? His thoughts of having to make a stand returned, grim and unwelcome.
The squeaks and chirps increased, growing more excited, and then the bats flew out, a greater mass of them than Yanko had expected. He was not sure whether their exodus was a result of his attempt to communicate or if they had simply sensed his and Lakeo’s approach and were fleeing. He pushed and pulled himself into the opening, afraid
the people below would spot so many bats flying out at once—and that they would spot a couple of people climbing into the cave at the same time. His hand splatted into something soft, at the same time as the stench of bat guano flooded his nostrils. Until then, the sea breeze must have been keeping the odor at bay, but he gagged, and it was all he could do to keep from coughing.
“Yanko,” Lakeo whispered, making his name sound like a curse as she followed him inside.
“Sorry. Best I could do.” Yanko forced himself to crawl deeper, though his stomach roiled at the powerful stench. He wanted to create a light, but dared not unless they could get far enough back that it would not be visible from outside. He sensed that the cave grew wider and continued, heading deeper into the mountain, and that heartened him—or at least made slipping and squishing through knee-deep piles of bat dung easier to accept.
“This is not the kind of place you’re supposed to take a woman on a moonlit night.”
“I didn’t notice a moon out there,” Yanko said.
“Fine, then on a starlit night. Or ever.”
Distant shouts drifted up to the cave. Shouts of anger and irritation? Yanko could not tell for certain, but he hoped the bats were harassing his pursuers.
A faint orange light pulsed to life ahead of them. Yanko reared back, reaching for his sword. He hadn’t made the light.
“Relax,” Lakeo said. “It’s me. I got tired of walking in guano.”
“The assassin is right behind us,” Yanko whispered.
Lakeo glanced back. “You’re sure?”
They had crawled about twenty-five feet into the cave, and he could see the sky through the dark frame of rock at the opening. He didn’t spot anyone crawling in, but his gut clenched when he reached out with his senses. She was outside, almost to the opening. There weren’t any roots growing beneath the rock, no plants he could use to make another trap.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “She’s almost here.”
Yanko swiped his hand through the air, cutting out Lakeo’s light with a thought, but not before he glimpsed that the cave did indeed turn into a tunnel and continue into the volcano, at least for a ways. “Hurry,” he whispered. “We can keep going.”